I don't really see why the whole foods hate is so hip. I shop there routinely and buy mostly the non packaged stuff. Organic vegetables and fruits are cheaper than in most chains and I really have not found any other place where I can get grass fed (tasty), pasteurized (convenient), non homogenized (yes it makes a difference. In taste and texture and arguably healthier) milk. Of course I do not buy the silly precut fruits and stuff. But if someone finds it convenient and doesn't mind spending the money I don't care. But in the end I shop there because most stuff there is made from good simple ingredients and I don't have to spend a long time reading ingredient lists especially the ones that changes often
> I don't really see why the whole foods hate is so hip.
I think there has long been a resentment of them.
20 years ago I did some technical work for a natural foods broker. They knew the wholesale price for all sorts of organic and alternative foodstuffs. They were just astounded by Whole Foods markups as compared with other vendors. If I recall rightly, the Whole Foods marketing also rubbed them the wrong way; it had strong class-based elements, taking the natural foods industry from a "power to the people" feel to a "this is fancy and high class" feel.
In a business sense, they've clearly done well by it. They're at the intersection of rising inequality and rising concern over what we eat. But that limits them too; trying for "mass-market luxury" is a precarious position. You end up resented by the true luxury fans as cheapening something they care about. And other companies, ones not constrained by luxury, can go after the mass-market end of things. Plus they still have the essential contradiction between commercial exploitation and the natural do-goodery of the organic foods types.
So the hate seems pretty plausible to me. Their old shtick is working less well; the grocery market is really different 20 years on. They'll need to find a new shtick, but I don't think that will be an easy transition.
Very well said. This is why I see TJ's eating Whole Foods's lunch. TJ's started from the opposite end. Like what I imagine possibly happening to iOS at the hands of Android, this is a true example of "disruptive" in its earlier definition -- start down market and move up, not the other way around.
> Disruptive innovation, a term of art coined by Clayton Christensen, describes a process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves up market, eventually displacing established competitors.
Moving from upmarket to down is also hard to do - witness IBM trying to move to PCs from mainframes, and just today, Nikon trying to make a lower range camera (the DL just got canceled due to massive Nikon losses).
In my view, Whole Foods is losing out because while they stuck to Organic with a capital "O", they forgot about the rest of the things people want. Clearly everyone is different, but a regular grocery store has the luxury of catering to most of those ( low cost, wide variety, close by, _and_ organic). Whole Foods only can offer one of those (currently).
So companies like HEB, which have some very nice grocery stores, can easily shift their product mix to fit the neighborhood they serve. That's a huge advantage, and I don't know how WF can fight them and succeed.
The genius of Whole Foods to me was that in the same store you'll see a $35,000 a year new college grad shopping along side a $300,000 a year professional. It hit the upmarket class stuff and kept the hippy stuff too so the educated group would aspire to go there.
This as opposed to Fresh Market, which was purely upmarket/upper class.
> They're at the intersection of rising inequality and rising concern over what we eat. But that limits them too; trying for "mass-market luxury" is a precarious position.
Thanks, that's basically the best expression of some of the things I've always felt about them without managing to put words on it. They basically have a classic strategy of Luxury, without selling high-end stuff like Harrods/Hediard, the tier they happen to be dominant on is something I would awkwardly label good and healthy. I've always found profoundly immoral the idea that access to this kind of food should be reserved to wealthy people, that it implies a certain cultural baggage, and that it can be used to signal social status.
In my neighborhood, I've realized that whole foods on Saturday morning as become a sort of meeting point for the local socialites, which are often perfect caricatures. It's fascinating to witness two acquaintances bump into each other, and almost directly perform a review of the content of their cart, it's almost like if their heilroom tomatoes had replaced their rolexes. Actually, it's funny because I realize I often do something not just remotely similar, when the guy in front of me has a huge cart entirely filled with stuff I know will be expensive: I cant help but to think "wow, he must be packed", then the unavoidable voyeurism related to damage assessment. If it ends up being a 4 digit number and the guy apple pays quickly with zero emotion on his face, it can be intense.
Your analysis of how the competition will exploit the weakness of their strange position is spot on.
Laptops are a declining market, and they have circa 10% of it. Phones sales are only growing slowly, and they have a declining share of that market. iPad sales are dropping precipitously. iPods will eventually stop being a product at all. Competition is advancing; their once-innovative products now have pretty close matches, even as the price gap widens.
To maintain their position, I think they're going to need to find a new product category, one where they can leap out ahead as they did with all those other products. The watch was a fine accessory, but not a major category. They've never done particularly well in the TV space. There's no other immediately obvious market for them to jump into.
Can they do that? We'll see, but the last time they succeeded was with the tablet computer, and that was with Jobs at the helm. So I'd call their future... precarious.
My gripe with wholefoods goes beyond the price. I take issue with their business ethics and general operating philosophy. It's a pretty typical appeal to the "conscious" consumer that will only look skin deep when making a decision about products. It's a kind of slacktivism, wholefoods marketing team tells me that they care about the environment and the small farmer so surely buying from them is the most ethical consumption.
I believe it is misleading though. The company's only goal is profit and this is very evident when you hear their libertarian CEO speak. He's a sociopath preying on the good will of middle class liberals. Combine that with the exploitation of cheap prison labour as a perfect example of the company's principles in execution and it just leaves a bad taste with those seasonal organic vegetables.
Edit: If you really want to get tasty, fresh, sustainable, local, and organic food then join or start a local food co-operative. This gets everyone a fair price for high quality products along with paying people fairly for their produce and work. It's also completely democratic so all practices are decided upon by the members and not just by some megalomanic CEO or greedy shareholders.
A company's goal should be profit. Why is profit a bad word so often? They aren't abusing customers or employees to get that profit... both of those groups regularly praise the company... so I don't see the problem in seeking as much profit as you can. Thats how free market works, right? And if they go to far in the name of profit, they will see it reflected and profits drop... on a site created around startups, its interesting that the "profit" as a bad word is still a thing here...
You can want to make as much profit as possible while ALSO doing the right thing ethically.
A company with investors has to make enough profit to give the investors a fair return. And any company needs enough profit to reinvest in growth. But profit alone isn't a sustaining motivation. One entrepreneur I know sold his first company back in the 90s for >$100m. As he was working on his next venture, he said, "Profit isn't the point. Profit is permission to continue."
The purpose of a company is generally to create value for a given audience in particular ways, often ones that have a broader impact.
For example, the purpose of the New York Times is to inform readers about the things that matter to them and to the world. They do that because they see journalism as necessary to a healthy society, a healthy world.
If you approach the same audience and tools with a goal of pure profit, you end up with things like supermarket tabloids, viral clickbait, and Macedonian fake news farms. Those have a much higher ROI than real journalism; they're going to be much more profitable. By your theory, they're better companies. But they aren't.
>> One entrepreneur I know sold his first company back in the 90s for >$100m. As he was working on his next venture, he said, "Profit isn't the point. Profit is permission to continue."
Easy to say profit doesn't matter once you've cleared $100mm.
Of course if I hadn't mentioned how well his previous business did, somebody would have suggested the person knew nothing about business.
And since you missed it, let me be clear: he didn't say profit doesn't matter. He said profit wasn't the point. His previous business was quite profitable, but that's not why he did it.
To expand a bit, I see business success as balancing the needs of four groups, whose needs are naturally in tension:
(1) Employees, who want the best pay, work conditions, job satisfaction, etc.
(2) Investors, who want the best financial return
(3) Suppliers, who want to be paid on time and want repeat business
(4) Customers, who want great products at the minimum price possible
I'm American. One thing I've noticed reading economic histories of the US, such as Reich's Supercapitalism, is how shareholder/profit-oriented US business became, around say, the late 1970s/early 1980s. This was the heyday of leveraged buyouts, and I can't help but think that, in terms of operating quality of US companies, there was indeed much trash to be taken out. Business was too cozy; customers and investors were getting a raw deal. You hear all these Mad Men-esque stories of sexual harassment, two-Martini lunches, expense accounts, and I can't help but think, man, the customers and investors must have gotten a pretty raw deal that employees could get away with that stuff (working so little, being distracted, wasting capital, making shoddy products).
I also think Japanese and German capitalism are more employee/manager-oriented than the US for various reasons.
In the end I think it depends on which group (of the four above) are culturally privileged. We hold investors in pretty high regard in the US vs. employees; it's very "capitalist". I have no idea whether it's right, but I think it's a useful insight. In the end I think it comes down to culture, and that US culture is pretty capitalist compared to say, France.
It didn't dawn on me that investors are only one constituency. For owner-operators, investors and managers are the same person, so of course, businesses would be operated (managed) for benefit of their investors; they're the same people.
But you're right, investors are only one group, you need to keep them happy, and that's done with profit. It's not a very important insight when investors = operators (most small businesses), but as the two groups diverge, such as when entrepreneurs use a lot of outside funding, I think "permission to continue" is a good way of looking at it.
The most profitable companies in the world tend to create a lot of value. If you want to create a company seeking "pure profit", you'd be well advised to create a lot of value. Get-rich-quick scams sometimes work, but they're not scalable, and hardly ever "much more profitable" than solid businesses.
In the Lean world (as in Lean Manufacturing), the definition of value is the customer's definition. That makes sense, as that's the definition that, at least over the long term, controls how much you can make.
Value is closer to revenue than profit, IMO. Profit is an internal accounting issue.
If you give me two $10 bills in exchange for a single $20 bill, it's clear that the value of what you gave me was $20, but unless you are counterfeiting or laundering money, I presume your profit was $0.
Conversely, if you save the seeds from tomatoes, grow them in your yard, and sell me $20 of tomatoes, same $20 of value, and presumably close to $20 in profit.
Value is definitely closer to revenue, but it's important to note that it can diverge. For example, channel-stuffing [1] creates revenue but does not deliver value. Fraud too can have high revenue but deliver no value.
Goods and services that don't turn a profit can still have great value. For instance, can you monetize the air you breath? Not really, but I imagine it has great value to you.
"A company with investors has to make enough profit to give the investors a fair return."
A company with investors has to make enough profit to give the investors their expected return that they were promised, within the bounds of the forward looking statements, etc., that the company put forth to receive the investment.
There's no "fair" anywhere in there - nor should there be.
"But profit alone isn't a sustaining motivation."
That's true for me and it might be true for you but it isn't true for everyone, nor should it be. We should expect that there are many people and organizations for whom profit alone is a sustaining motivation - and we should take steps that we are not fragile to such actors.
> There's no "fair" anywhere in there - nor should there be.
This is basically a moral claim. I think it's a sad sort of morality. That's irrelevant to that point, which is a practical one. Businesses generally have to give investors a return they feel is fair, or they stop getting investors. Investors are primates, and so have a sense of fairness. [1] The notion of a fair rate of return is also related to the market rate, and companies that fail to provide market-rate returns don't do well, no matter how precisely correct their forward-looking statements.
As to profit being a sustaining motivation, feel free to give examples, but I find your raw assertions unpersuasive. I believe that it's necessarily true for organization in the long run, in that profit-seeking is a short-term motivation, one that essentially conflicts with the long-term work needed for sustainable companies.
> we should take steps that we are not fragile to such actors.
Sure, but that's true whether or not their exploitative behavior is in some sense sustainable. Indeed, we need to be most careful of the unsustainable ones; they're the most dangerous.
> the purpose of the New York Times is to inform readers about the things that matter to them and to the world.
Why isn't the purpose of the New York Times to mis-inform and trick its readers into blindly accepting horrific policies such as the US Invasion of Iraq in 2003? [1]
A corporation's means and purpose are one in the same: profit.
I love reading vague, romanticized mischaracterisations of corporations that enables the writer to not need to reconcile their politics with their current living scenarios. But this is a totally inadequate explanation for the existence and purpose of corporations today.
Companies exist to derive profit for their investors, primarily by increasing the value of their common stock and by dividends. Whatever other impact is made by a company's operations in the marketplace is an externality.
Sometimes an externality is positive, sometimes it is negative. The New York Times exists to derive profit for its investors, and it does this by, yes, making a product that informs its readers. But they also do it by nuzzling up next to evil, moneyed interests - making deals with the devil and serving significant positions in helping to roll out horrible public and international policies.
Perhaps journalism is necessary for a healthy society, but could you honestly accuse NYT of being the purveyors of such an ideal? NYT is extraordinarily guilty of nefarious, trixy, and immoral activity compared with its competition, in fact. The goal of pure profit has certainly made the NYT a strong purveyor of tabloid-esque material, clickbaity headlines, and outrageous, unfounded articles.
To change this, the American public needs to elevate its own desire for quality journalism to the extent that it becomes more valuable to pursue that goal, than to pursue clicks, outrage, and lowest-common-denominator dreck like the NYT and all other corporate news entities do today. That would be quite a tall order for a society driven to mass mental illness by their weak, thoughtless acceptance of social media into their every waking moment.
I'm just going to ignore your NYT frothing, for which you are reasonably being downvoted. If you really can't put your personal opinions aside for three entire minutes, there are plenty of other companies that are clearly shaped by a sense of purpose.
Toyota, for example, is explicit about it. If you talk with employees at Apple, Intel, or Google, you can easily see that they're not just doing whatever random thing that is profitable; all three companies have a deep sense of purpose. They know their chosen audiences and are dedicated to creating value.
> Companies exist to derive profit for their investors, primarily by increasing the value of their common stock and by dividends.
There are several ways you could mean this, but I think all of them are wrong.
Companies exist societally because we have decided that we want to encourage certain sorts of positive-sum economic activity. If they didn't, we wouldn't allow them. What you write off as an externality is, systemically, the entire point.
Individual companies exist because one or more people have lined up around an idea and pursued it with great dedication. I have not met a single entrepreneur whose chosen purpose is "produce a good return for the LPs of some investment fund".
Those companies attract employees partly because they can make a living. But also because the company's audience and work are something they can get behind. Nobody lasts long doing a job where they hate the company's mission.
From the customer's perspective, the question of purpose is even clearer. It's to give them things they want in exchange for reasonable amounts of money.
In theory you might be right about the investor's sense of purpose: maybe they see companies as pure profit-making machines. But even there, the investors I've met don't act that way. They get really excited about who a company's audience is and how they are choosing to serve them.
And I'm hardly alone in disagreeing with the "maximize shareholder value" school of thought. If you care to search for "world's dumbest idea" you'll find plenty of discussion slamming it. Including from business luminaries like Jack Welch and Mark Benioff: http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2015/02/05/salesfor...
Entertainingly, even the Whole Foods CEO disagrees with your theory. He wrote: "But we have not achieved our tremendous increase in shareholder value by making shareholder value the primary purpose of our business. [...] the most successful businesses put the customer first, ahead of the investors. In the profit-centered business, customer happiness is merely a means to an end: maximizing profits. In the customer-centered business, customer happiness is an end in itself, and will be pursued with greater interest, passion, and empathy than the profit-centered business is capable of."
Not all companies are for-profit. And, to some people, the very definition of profit is the extra money you can get by paying workers only so much while charging customers that much more. That is to say, profit is the stolen excess value of labour that you never paid back to the worker. So in this perspective, profit is by definition gained from the exploitation of worker or consumer or both.
There are plenty examples where companies will profit even though they are "going too far." Just think of all the profit made from war while the majority of people disagree with the war.
Your ethics of "doing the right thing" while making as much profit as possible are also subjective if you consider the definition of profit that I proposed above. I know I'm saying all this in a forum based around startups but I think it's worth pointing out.
So in this perspective, profit is by definition gained from the exploitation of worker or consumer or both.
That is a perspective, yes. It's also ridiculous zero-sum thinking contradicted by both theory and reality. The iPhone has resulted in hundreds of millions of happy customers, and tens of thousands of high paying jobs. But apparently all of those people are "exploited" because Apple makes a profit.
But you can't prove that this would not have been possible if Apple were non-profit.
Sure, it probably would have been unlikely but this is because non-profits are usually less thrilled about hiring de-facto slave labour in China or elsewhere on the supply chain in order to produce an iPhone at a price where large profits can be made.
People waste a lot of time arguing over charges of hypocrisy. In practice, it ends up being a way of shifting the conversation from the argument that someone is making to the person who is making it.
Hypocrisy isn't great, but practically everyone has been guilty of it in one way or another. So it's an easy charge to make that gets everyone worked up.
I don't know if we should tolerate hypocrisy, but I'd be in favor of talking about it less in favor of more direct and productive arguments.
I'm not the friend (nor am I a libertarian), but YES.
Don't tolerate hypocrisy for hypocrisy's sake, but recognize when it's pragmatic to tolerate it to either move things in the correct direction or simply to limit how far they slide in the wrong direction.
First, let me point you to where such tolerance has been effective at advancing agendas (note that in neither case do I agree with or support the agendas).
My preferred concrete example, simply because of how staggeringly effective tolerating hypocrisy was at getting a resoundingly unpopular law to become the law of the land is American Prohibition. During the lead-up to prohibition in the United States one of the most successful lobbyists was a man named Wayne Wheeler of the Anti-Saloon League. He would work with or endorse any candidate that supported a dry agenda, and he'd work to replace those that didn't with those that did. This included candidates who were, themselves, barely-functional alcoholics. They would drink while meeting with him (he himself was truly a teetotaler as far as we know) while discussing the very legislation that would make acquiring alcohol illegal. He took it all in stride as long as they voted the right way. Despite the perceived success of the wets in attaching a 7-year limit on time-to-ratification for the 18th amendment, it passed the required number of state houses in less than two years.
For a more modern example I direct you to Republican's willingness to re-elect "family values" candidates who support and push through anti-LGBTQ legislation but who have themselves been caught in flagrante delicto. I find such laws reprehensible, but I cannot deny the effectiveness of the right in passing them, in part due to a willingness to tolerate effective but hypocritical legislators.
In terms of where I believe a failure to tolerate hypocrisy has resulted in net loses for progressive causes, I'd point to politicians with strongly progressive voting histories are pilloried and their political careers are summarily executed because they turn out to be corrupt, sexist, racist, homophobic, etc. If their voting history and the legacy they're leaving behind is a progressive one (and stays that way), who cares if they're only pursuing it because they know it will get them re-elected? Unless you can find a candidate who will produce a better net effect, stick with the flawed bigot.
Concretely, take Hillary Clinton after the primaries[0]. I saw it argued that she was a hypocrite for taking millions in speaking fees from big banks while talking about protecting the little guy. She may well be a hypocrite (and her banking voting history isn't great), but the platform she was running on and much of the rest of her voting history are solidly progressive. The number of votes lost due to perceived hypocrisy probably wouldn't have swayed that contest, but more broadly I see it in the same category of being idealistic to a fault.
Negotiating with some one who is both anti abortion and pro execution. Do you refuse to work with that person (eg prison reform, women's health)? Or do you focus on shared interests, win/win?
That's inconsistency, not hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is someone who is anti-abortion, but would get an abortion because they had a trip to Hawaii planned, or is anti-execution, but is pushing a prosecutor to go for the death penalty in the case of their child's murder.
But I do agree that there is a case to be made to work those people, if their views align with yours, even though they are personally hypocrites. On the other hand, maybe not the most trustworthy allies.
The problem is that you're assuming that all life is equally valuable. That's a flawed assumption, and is not true of people who are simultaneously anti-abortion and pro-execution. To them, unborn fetuses are innocent, whereas convicted criminals are not. So it's wrong to "execute" unborn fetuses, who haven't committed any crimes, whereas convicted criminals aren't innocent at all, and are fair game for execution.
Can I ask you a question then? If you feel there is a conflict in being anti-abortion and pro-execution, wouldn't that equally apply to people who are pro-abortion and anti-execution?
I don't think there is a conflict with either position because they are vastly different scenarios, and neither side is basing their argument on an absolute position on the value of all life in all circumstances. A good example would be: Someone who opposes kidnapping, but supports imprisoning criminals. Those positions are not in conflict, even though prison is just legal kidnapping.
> The company's only goal is profit and this is very evident when you hear their libertarian CEO speak.
> You can want to make as much profit as possible while ALSO doing the right thing ethically.
OP even said that their ONLY goal was profit. Of course as a company in a society like ours you have to make profit. It's when that becomes a priority that obscures all others that people find it distasteful.
One of a companies goals may be profit, but it may not be it's only goal.
When companies engage intelligently, they an create 'win win' scenarios. When they don't they can create zero-sum - or worse - can profit by actually destroying net value.
That seems to be the problem from the article. Whole Foods had seen its profits drop due to competition, so it has to ditch the "do the right thing ethically" to maintain its profit margin.
I think that the marketing of WF and the image they try to convey is the most pathetic aspect of this company in how it contrasts with the social model they encourage.
There's a certain feel of hyperreality in those stores, their hiring guidelines must be a great read. I'm fascinated by how cashiers always appear to me as the same prototype of fabricated cool-and-polite-and-supernice robots. A few smiles, a little bit of small talk, sometimes a bit more chat on random things "oh I love that stuff! it's sooooo good!". I feel like WF is trying to tell me that those guys are not working here, they are just super cool and they are helping the distribution of organic food which is good for my health and important for the well being of the world. Oh and WF must be an NGO actually.
A few times a year, they do some fundraising at the cash register. It typically happens in the ultimate phase of the credit card translation (before the single/double inside/outside question). Cool cashier usually loudly asks "Whether I would like to donate some money to awesome charity helping orphaned children with cancer". The technique is pure genius both in terms of timing and leverage of peer pressure. The two options available are looking like a monster to the people in line behind, or directly financing the advertisement of whole foods as an ethical leader.
> I feel like WF is trying to tell me that those guys are not working here, they are just super cool and they are helping the distribution of organic food which is good for my health and important for the well being of the world.
> The two options available are looking like a monster to the people in line behind
I'm not paranoid. Checkout charity is not a new thing and its dynamics are well known. There is awareness in the retail industry that there are a few elementary dos and donts that can prevent shoppers (or paranoids like me) from feeling trapped and pressured. Safeway and Walgreens both prompt shoppers discreetly on the credit card terminal screen and that's all good. The reason WF does it this way seems very obvious to me.
>A few times a year, they do some fundraising at the cash register. It typically happens in the ultimate phase of the credit card translation (before the single/double inside/outside question). Cool cashier usually loudly asks "Whether I would like to donate some money to awesome charity helping orphaned children with cancer". The technique is pure genius both in terms of timing and leverage of peer pressure. The two options available are looking like a monster to the people in line behind, or directly financing the advertisement of whole foods as an ethical leader.
You mean you don't preschedule your charity donations each year/month and refuse to acknowledge momentary charity appeals?
What a strange way to live, feeling pressured by the Whole Foods cashier!
I vote with my dollars, as much as possible. Fortunately, I have many local choices (farmers markets, local mini chains, coops).
When traveling, I've been pleasantly surprised by Sprouts. It's like Trader Joe's doing Whole Foods. (I haven't checked on their politics, labor practices.)
Sprouts is pretty highly regarded here in Boulder, CO. Many students I know have worked there and were generally satisfied. I've been a happy customer for years with little to no complaints.
> It's also completely democratic so all practices are decided upon by the members and not just by some megalomanic CEO or greedy shareholders.
Speaking from experience, there's definitely slacktivism in cooperatives too.
I've seen several of them basically turn into UNFI/KeHE outlet stores selling the same big brands that are marketing themselves as "conscious" alternatives rather than smaller local vendors (because they can't make the same deals).
Not all coops are created equal and not all of them are looking out for their customers, local vendors, or employees. Yeah, there are good ones out there run by people who care about the products and customers, but don't think that just because it has "coop" in the title that it's one of them.
I agree there are some bad co-ops out there. My co-op is more radical than most, there is no hired labour and every member has to put in about 3 hours work each month to make up for it. The idea is - and I think this should generally be the goal of co-ops in any industry - that the management/administration middlemen of the food industry have become too powerful and are taking advantage of both consumers and producers. By taking back this power and sourcing the food directly for ourselves as a collective, we allow everyone to take part in organising how the system works and benefit equally from the exchange it's based on. Or at least, we try to get as close to that as possible.
And I love that idea. But I worked at a coop that didn't work that way at all.
Maybe it was that the board and management had largely remain unchanged for years or that there was investment larger than normal ownership which may have incentivized board decisions towards returns and expansion.
Regardless, there are multiple types from farmer coops, consumer coops, to employee/worker coops out there. and even within those divisions they're all handled in very different ways with different goals. If you're with one of the good ones, that's awesome, help them all you can. But be careful assuming that they all operate similarly.
I'm not a huge fan of the CEO in general, but I get the impression he really does care about the organic-foods part. There are more liberals who fall in that category, yes, but there are definitely libertarians into it as well. What's probably more unusual is that he's a wealthy big business type of libertarian who also likes organic foods, while the libertarians into organic food are more often the off-the-grid type.
I agree that the marketing is incredibly off-putting, but I reject that wanting to buy high quality fresh food for a reasonable price premium without participating in a local food co-op makes me a dupe or a bad person.
Well said, in Colorado we have farmers markets during the summer which allows for farmers to directly sell to consumers and make more money while the customer gets a better deal as well!
However during the winter I go to Natural Grocers, or Sprouts because the price is always cheaper (here at least it is much cheaper then Whole Foods).
Thanks for mentioning food cooperatives as another way to purchase high-quality food. I think the cooperative movement has a long way to go on terms of making cooperative ownership and purchasing broadly accessible, but it's a uniquely empowering business model in today's world.
The comments here are almost exclusively about the price and quality of products, with "store x has basically the same thing for less money" being a common theme.
Whole Foods nails the shopping experience for those who care about intangibles. It's always clean. It's always well stocked. They have very educated cashiers who can move lines quickly and make autonomous decisions when an item doesn't ring up. They can give $100 cash back so I don't need to hit the ATM ever. They don't have those horrendously buggy self checkouts.
If you can trade money for time and convenience, WF is a great experience. After getting used to it, other stores are frustrating to me.
Honestly, I like the atmosphere in Market Basket better. It's crowded, busy, and full of cheap staple goods -- exactly the way a supermarket should be.
I've been in my local WF a few times and see what you mean, but never felt it to be worth the premium. I do most of my shopping at Trader Joe's, which has many of the same advantages but is also cheap.
I can see it if the choices are WF or a crappy Giant or Safeway....
I disagree. Cashiers are no more intelligent at whole foods as they are at a Safeway. They barely talk or acknowledge your presence. Major stores are clean and neat. That's SOP. $100 back in cash? Why is that important? I give them points for letting me use Apple Pay but beyond that Whole Foods "experiance" is no different than a Kroger, Wegmans, or Sprouts. Maybe you're living in a really run down area where Whole Foods is the only well managed place.
Maybe this varies by geography but the Kroger stores around me all satisfy these constraints.
The WF near me is actually a much slower checkout experience because they have less cashiers open (often ~2) and no Uscans, so I either wait in line longer or avoid it. At WF, I've waited in line for 10+ minutes before getting to the register but that's never happened at Kroger.
> Organic vegetables and fruits are cheaper than in most chains
I recently discovered the above, and after paying attention there are many items that are less expensive at WF. The whole fresh fruits and vegetables are the same price or cheaper than other local chains, and are also very high quality. The only place that beats them on price is Walmart, but quality is hit and miss (normally miss).
I have found beer and wine to be $1-$2 cheaper at WF than local chains. Not everything of course, but I tend to keep the same wine and beer around the house so I notice pricing. Good cheese can also be had for less money at WF. The WF brand whole bean coffee is also cheaper than anything else I have found locally.
If frugality is the goal I have found that for most packaged stuff Walmart is the way to go. Then WF for fruits and veggies, and finally Harris Teeter (local chain in the south) for meats (never ending special boneless/skinless chicken breasts are always $1.99/lb).
Don't you have markets in U.S where you can buy straight from farmers? It would be more convenient and helps locals. If you care about organic and fresh stuff.
This is hugely regional, and depends on both supply and demand. When I grew up in Michigan, there were huge produce "stands" that were overflowing with fresh food. I remember one place, that's still in business, where the sweet corn was on a big trailer, and was going so fast that they left the trailer hooked up to a tractor with the engine running, and when it was empty, the next tractor pulled in with a full trailer. The tomatoes were heavenly. And so forth. Four cash registers running full tilt.
I believe a big factor was demand. People in Michigan loved their fruits and veggies. Same in northern Indiana when I went there.
Then I moved to Texas... nothing. The quality of veggies at the store was poor -- often rotting. Even at the flagship Whole Foods in Dallas. Granted, that was going on 20 years ago. People didn't eat vegetables.
Then I moved to Wisconsin. You'd think, but no. Conditions for growing veggies should be just fine in WI, but there's no demand. I've met lots of people who have never eaten a green vegetable.
We have Saturday "farmers markets." These are common in affluent towns. Each "farmer" has a little booth, and prices are astronomical. There's a little bluegrass band, and lots of the booths are selling... prepared foods, such as muffins. A plus side is that folks have recommended talking to the meat vendors. They will agree to supply you with a quantity of meat, anything you want, and it will be good stuff.
> A plus side is that folks have recommended talking to the meat vendors.
Buying meat from these types of markets really is the best of both worlds for producers: they can sell their product with a short shelf life, and the consumers are more than willing to hit the price point between cost-to-produce and cost-to-get-to-market if they were to sell through a middle man.
Depends a lot on where you live. Megan McArdle had a good summary of the situation in one of her pieces[1]:
"It's no accident that certain sorts of food movements, like "eat local" and "eat simple," tend to start and thrive on the West Coast. If you're living next door to California's abundant, incredible produce, then it's easy to say that everyone ought to be chowing down on fresh local fruits and vegetables, rather than some processed or imported version. In the rest of the country, however, fresh local produce is available only in a narrow annual window -- and if you don't have the income to shop at a farmer's market, or nearby land where you can shop at farm stands or grow your own, it functionally isn't available at all."
It is really hit or miss. It takes a large city like Dallas to have a permanent farmers market. Smaller towns might have a month where they have a farmer's market every weekend, but nothing the rest of the year.
I would say that even small towns have farmers markets that last most of the growing season (like even a village of 10,000 will often have one all summer, although it of course won't be comparable to one in a large city).
And CSAs (Community-supported agriculture) are becoming more popular.
This doesn't seem true to me at all. Where do you live? My biggish (100k) crazy-for-organics town has one that is only open on one weeknight and one weekend morning, only in the summer. My medium (25k) midwestern home town only has big box groceries.
Yes, there are certainly a good number of these, but one of the main reasons I would go to a grocery stores is to buy non-local produce. For instance, avocados or various other fruits aren't grown anywhere near where I live.
The local grocery (including WF) all carry locally sourced products. The problem with the farmers markets is they are only open once/week at inconvenient times.
Seafood on the other hand is easy to get local and fresh.
I routinely shop there as well, generally speaking, their fruits and vegetables despite being a tad more expensive are of higher quality than most places. I've also observed that WF stores usually have sufficient mancount to deliver decent checkout performances. The staff is always friendly and helpful and the cashiers in particular always impress me with their handling of the mandatory sterile discussion. When they ask me whether I would like a second bag, I sometimes feel them genuinely worried about what could happen otherwise.
Checkout performance is key. It's one of the main reasons I shop there. Even at peak times, the wait time seems to be an order of magnitude less than checking out at Safeway. Also, the person checking you out at Whole Foods is usually happier and nicer than the person checking you out at Safeway.
I don't really see a business analysis as band wagon whole foods hate, if you're referring to the article.
However, the lawsuit they faced with 'vegetable infused water' without the vegetables was a pretty serious black mark against them that people didn't forget.
> non homogenized (yes it makes a difference. In taste and texture and arguably healthier)
Could you elaborate on this? What's the argument for non-homogenized milk being healthier?
Per Wikipedia: "The fat in milk normally separates from the water and collects at the top. Homogenization breaks the fat into smaller sizes so it no longer separates, allowing the sale of non-separating milk at any fat specification."
I just don't understand how smaller fat particles are less healthy than large ones at the top (apart from perhaps the liquid milk being fattier, in which case you can simply buy milk with less fat).
If I may..even though the quote isn't attributed to me...
It's really a long and involved answer but I am going to try my best to keep it simple.
Raw milk that has fat(lipids), protein, amino acids and sugars(glucose) amongst other good stuff. Milk is essentially a suspension..that is fat suspended in the fluid. When you homogenize milk, it is passed through a fine nozzle so that it's no longer a suspension. It is all one homogenous uniform mixture..with everything mixed and melded together.
What happens is that the lipids in the original raw state is encased within a thin membrane called milk fat globule membrane..that's why the cream is 'suspended' and separate from the liquid milk itself. This membrane/cell wall of the lipid is now shattered during the homogenization process.
That membrane is there for a reason. Mammalian milk is the complete food for the offsprings..from an evolutionary pov, it has to contain everything to sustain the infant. Lactation is a highly expensive action for the mammalian mother..why would she give up so much resources and energy to design lipids and protein and other stuff so perfectly packaged in the medium that is suspension based raw milk delivery system?
The fat globule membrane could be there for the right order in which to digest or process the nutrients for the most optimal and complete food source for the baby. Modern machinations have altered the structure of milk protein/fats/sugars that full fat(aka regular) milk is considered unhealthy. Milk can cause indigestion..milk fats causes heart disease..the sugars are considered carbs. But it is really the perfect and complete food which has the exact delivery system that costs the mother so much to provide her offspring. Of course, the mother in this case is the cow from whose offsprings we steal the milk but the evolutionary argument for the structure of raw milk and the weirdness/uselessness/wastefulness of trying to alter its perfect structure remains..
On a slightly related note..goat milk for example has higher protein but it doesn't contain the milk fat globule membrane..and it isn't necessary to homogenize it..it comes naturally homogenized. Some have lesser intolerances with goats milk than with cows milk..so I am going to guess that it has something to do with casein. Donkeys milk..yaks milk..buffalo milk..camels milk..sheeps milk. They are all acceptable to drink in diff parts of the world. I grew up on buffalos milk which is richer and creamier. Big topic..I hope I haven't digressed too much! Gah!
It still doesn't quite make sense to me. The argument you're presenting, as I understand it, is that evolution resulted in milk naturally being made a certain way (with a membrane) and that changing this is might be bad but we don't really know?
there has been studies but there has always been conflicting points of views about it.
personally: i feel that the milk fat globule membrane slows down digestion. and the lipids take longer before they are introduced into the digestion process. this could have some positive effects. not dissimilar to eating a spoonful of sugar and having a spoonful of sugar with fruit baked as a tart. the science of it is so complicated that i cant even remember how it works but i am sure you can google it. it has something to do with bile acids and bile salts and which part of the stomach the lipids get absorbed. i just recall from way long ago.
it makes more sense to me because studies show that homogenised milk increases digestablity of milk. perhaps its not meant to be digested quickly. perhaps there is a genetic component to it wherein not everyone is meant to be dairy consumers.
having said that..what stuck to me was the evolutionary design of milk itself. there was something very poetic about it. all body secretions are actually elegant story tellers if you think about it. it tells a story about the person from whom it comes..its like a snapshot..be it blood or mucus or semen or milk or plasma or even that booger you dig from your nose.
mammalian milk has a very specific function. they are carriers. its costly for the person who is producing it. as per design, it is the most perfect structure. the milk we consume doesnt come from our species. it comes from the cow which is definitely much much different than us..they have four stomachs, for starters.
we should start with whether cows milk is even suitable for us. having started with an imperfect product that is ill fitted for human consumption, messing it up further makes no sense. having said that, studies show that human milk has MFG(milk fat globules) too.
so..to me..logically, i would want the milk fat globule membrane intact in any other mammalian milk product too. i wouldnt go as far as drinking bovine raw milk unless i knew where it came from...but i honestly dont see anything beneficial about homogenisation. on the other hand, we dont really know if there are ill effects to it. i would stick to what's natural given the lack of definitive studies.
[...]Human milk contains many components that protect the newborn against infection at a time when the infant's own defense mechanisms are poorly developed. Fat is one of the major nutrients in human milk. The fat is contained within milk fat globules composed of a core of triglyceride and a membrane consisting of phospholipids, cholesterol, proteins, and glycoproteins. Both the membrane and the core components can provide protection against microorganisms. The major protective membrane glycoproteins, mucin, and lactadherin are resistant to conditions in the newborn's stomach and maintain their structure and function even at low pH and in the presence of the proteolytic enzyme pepsin. The core triglycerides upon hydrolysis by digestive lipases (especially gastric lipase, which is well developed in the newborn) produce free fatty acids and monoglycerides, amphiphylic substances able to lyse enveloped viruses, bacteria, and protozoa. Therefore, in addition to its nutritional value, the fat in human milk has a major protective function.[...]
"I don't really see why the whole foods hate is so hip." Then you must not have many choices available in your area to get the same items for less. Natural Grocers, Aldi, Trader Joe's, Market of Choice, New Seasons, Sprouts...the list goes on and on.
I have tons of choices available and share the GP's question about the trendiness of piling on the hate train. I've done that comparison in a fair number of cities and “same items for less” has never been true on a consistent basis: it's either a small percentage either way or comparing different things.
I love Trader Joe's but I shop there for the store brand items and a few specials. At every location I've been to (CA, CT, MA, DC, FL) the vegetable selection is far more limited than Whole Foods and generally lower quality. That doesn't mean that one is better or worse than the other, only that they're different businesses with different models. TJ's loves to stock things they can get a deal on, which is great but limited.
This is true of the local supermarkets: yes, they stock a lot of organic options now. No, they're not better quality and they're usually more expensive because it's a premium niche category for them but a core product for WF. If you look at the loss leader specials, yes, they're often cheaper but some things in your cart are also more expensive.
I think this goes back to people relying on anecdotes instead of data and the psychological weight of a few high-end items skewing perception of the entire store. People see some super high-end olive oil, say “oh my god, can you believe how much that costs?!”, and forget the more affordable option on the same shelf or that the store they're comparing it to didn't even stock the equivalent grade of product.
> I have tons of choices available and share the GP's question about the trendiness of piling on the hate train. I've done that comparison in a fair number of cities and “same items for less” has never been true on a consistent basis: it's either a small percentage either way or comparing different things.
This depends on a lot on the "consumption basket". The small percentage comment is definitely not true for some categories of products. Concretely, consider cheese. Genuine imported Parmigiano-Reggiano can be had outside Whole Foods for < $14 a pound, with extremes like Costco selling it for $12 I believe.
Whole Foods charges $20 for this, a ~ 50% higher price.
Similar remarks apply to other high grade cheeses.
More generally, although Whole Foods keeps the pricing of their store brand products competitive (e.g the 365 value stuff), they certainly do mark up many high quality items significantly.
It might be the case that this hate is not even grounded in a realistic financial assessment of the company. The reaction of Wall St. to this earnings report, which the WaPo presents as a sign of collapse, was, in fact, bullish. The stock closed up a few percent ($30.35) the next day from the previous day's close ($29.30). If you look more closely at their strategy, it seems like they're trying to enter a slower growth phase, where they simply focus on the markets that provide them steady profits. They are closing a few stores, but those stores were older, poorly performing locations.
I can offer a more personal perspective: I currently live in the Bay Area but spend a fair amount of time in Manhattan, as well. When shopping in California, I essentially never go to Whole Foods because the produce prices are ridiculous in comparison to the high quality local grocers near my home. In Manhattan, however, I nearly exclusively shop at Whole Foods because the produce is reliably good, the 365 products are affordable, and the prices are fairly competitive (if not better than) many other options. Of course, there are less expensive stores that I could go to in New York, but they generally don't offer the convenience or quality.
We must live in different places in the Bay Area, or else you're not factoring in quality.
I have two stores within biking distance (15-20 min or less) and perhaps four in driving distance (same time in city traffic). I'm not counting convenience stores or other similar dives.
With one exception (meat) on a quality basis Whole Foods averages out to be the same price as any other store I have shopped at. Meat is the exception because it averages to be about $1/lb more than other grocers.
Are you comparing like for like? I'm a very frugal shopper who will go to both stores in a trip to save $1, and I've observed that the high-end organic products are very similar in price. Organic milk at Safeway is about the same price as organic milk at WF, but there are many cheaper non-organic options at Safeway. Grass fed hamburger or steak is about the same price, but there are also cheaper non-organic, non-grass fed options at Safeway.
I tend to agree that the fresh fruits and veggies are pretty much the same price as competitors (really only experience is Safeway)
What I do find as a plus is Whole Foods tends to get more stuff locally if they can and a store like Safeway is going more regional or to Mexico to keep its costs down.
I'll pay a little more to have my fresh food being sourced locally and more time to ripen on the vine then ripen in a truck.
Our local Kroger has that along with tons of cheap, organic stuff. They also focus on quality of produce, service, etc. They can't match Whole Foods in how well the store is run since they're cut-throat in cost cutting. They do just good enough that all kinds of customers tolerate them. Gabriel's Worse is Better applied to grocery stores haha.
I'm totally unsurprised by the article seeing Walmart, Costco, and Kroger are one-stop shops for regular and organic items at much cheaper prices. I expected this to happen to Whole Foods. They should double down on the better shopping experience (less crowds) and offering obscure items big retails are too greedy to carry.
Surely, any chain of anything can have one-time, harmless, quality control problems at one location, without symbolizing some sort of corporate identity?
I like their food/produce and generally consider it a good value. Their wine selection/prices are surprisingly weak though.
The only thing I hate them for is selling/promoting snake oil. My guess is a lot of the hate towards Whole Foods is their clientele being perceived as snobby/out of touch/"richer than I am".
> I don't really see why the whole foods hate is so hip
I think it's probably because they tried to capitalize on selling "non-GMO" products, which is a huge marketing scam that some consumers are finally wising up to.
Don't believe me? Go find me some GMO oranges. Or GMO cilantro. Or GMO chocolate. Or GMO lettuce. Or GMO anything other than corn and soybeans.
Want to know why you can't find them? Because they don't exist. That doesn't stop companies like Whole Foods from slapping a "non-GMO" label on them and charging 2x the price of Safeway.
